ANALYSIS OF SWATCHH BHARAT MISSION

The World Health Organization states that: Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human urine and feces. Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities. The word 'sanitation' also refers to the maintenance of hygienic conditions, through services such as garbage collection and wastewater disposal.

Inadequate sanitation is a major cause of disease world-wide and improving sanitation is known to have a significant beneficial impact on health both in households and across communities.

Thus to meet the need, government has initiated Swatchh Bharat Mission.

The Swachh Bharat Mission, launched in October 2014, consists of two sub-missions – the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) (SBM-G), which will be implemented in rural areas, and the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), which will be implemented in urban areas. SBM-G seeks to eliminate open defecation in rural areas by 2019 through improving access to sanitation. It also seeks to generate awareness to motivate communities to adopt sustainable sanitation practices, and encourage the use of appropriate technologies for sanitation.

Swatchch Bharat Abhiyan Gramin

Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin SBM (G) endeavours to accelerate rural sanitation coverage, reduce open defecation and improve management of solid and liquid wastes. It focuses on ensuring usage of toilets along with their construction. There is a strong emphasis on behaviour change, including a focus on interpersonal communication; strengthening implementation and delivery mechanisms down to the village level; and giving states flexibility to design delivery mechanisms that take into account local cultures, practices, sensibilities and demands.

The focus of the Strategy is to move towards a ‘Swachh Bharat’ by providing flexibility to State Governments, as Sanitation is a state subject, to decide on their implementation policy and mechanisms, taking into account State specific requirements. This is focused to enable States to develop an Implementation Framework that can utilise the provisions under the Mission effectively and maximize the impact of the interventions. The Government of India’s role would be to complement the efforts of the State Governments through the focused programme being given the status of a Mission, recognizing its dire need for the country.

The suggested approach would be to adopt the Community led and Community Saturation approaches focusing heavily on collective behavioral change. Emphasis is to be placed on awareness generation, triggering behaviour change and demand generation for sanitary facilities in Houses, Schools, Anganwadis, places of Community congregation, and for Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities. Focus will be on Inter Personal Communication (IPC), especially of triggering of demand and use of toilets through social and behavioural change communication and house to house interventions.

Swatchch Bharat Abhiyan Urban

SBM (Urban) aims to ensure that a) No households engage in the practice of open defecation: b) No new insanitary toilets are constructed during the mission period, and c) Pit latrines are converted to sanitary latrines. The Target Group for construction of household units of Toilets, thus, is: (i) 80% of urban households engaging in open defecation (ii) All households with insanitary latrines (iii) All households with single-pit latrines These will be targeted under this component for the construction of household toilets or individual household latrines during the mission period. The remaining 20% of households practicing open defecation are assumed to be catered by community toilets due to constraints of space.

Swachh Bharat Kosh(SBK): Swachh Bharat cess is an improvement in the service tax by 0.5% on all the services in India.

The funding for 9 crore toilets is expected to come from 3 primary sources – Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Ministry of Rural Development, and the States in the ratio of 75:25 between centre and State and 90:10 for North Eastern state.

Key challenges

Mindset of People: About 590 Million persons in rural areas defecate in the open. The Mindset of a major portion of the population habituated to open defecation needs to be changed. Many of them already have a toilet but prefer to defecate in the open.

Scientific Solid & Liquid Waste Management sanitation practices: There is no professional expertise in the Municipal Corporation to keep the city clean and it remains unclear how and where the waste will be disposed and what extent of the responsibility for managing waste lies with citizens.

Sustainibilty: The lack of any resources for maintenance of school toilets and community sanitary complexes could result in rapid deterioration and subsequent non-usage of these over time, severely impacting the sustainability of the programme.

Lack of staff: Inadequate dedicated staff at the Field Level for implementation of rural sanitation.

NSSO Survey on Sanitation

To evaluate the implementation and progress of the Swachh Bharat Mission at central and state level, a survey was conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) during May-Jun 2015. Based on findings from the survey, states have been ranked in this report to capture their performance on access and usage of sanitary toilets in India. It is hoped that the ranking will sensitize the states on their performance and instill a sense of positive competition among them.

A survey on swachhta status was conducted by NSSO May-Jun 2015 covering 73, 176 households in 3788 villages across India.

Parameters and weightages of assessment for districts

This reports ranks districts on their status of sanitation, which has been assessed on the following four parameters:

Parameter- Weightage

Household having access to safe toilets and using them - 40

Households having no litter around -30

Public places with no litter on the surrounding -20

Households having no stagnant wastewater around -10

Method of state ranking

Based on findings of the survey, a state ranking was derived on the basis of percentage of households having sanitary toilets and using them. This percentage has been derived by multiplying

The percentage of households having sanitary toilets, and

The percentage of people using household/community toilets (of the people having access to toilets)

Method of district ranking

Districts including 22 from North East and special category states, across the country were shortlisted on the basis of their performance on following two indicators (as per the data available with ministry of drinking water and sanitation)

Improvement in toilet coverage since the launch of Swachh Bharat mission (2nd October 2014)

Percentage of ODF villages in these districts.

Equal weightages were assigned to these indicators. Since 50% weight was assigned to “improvement in toilet coverage since the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission”, some of the districts already having very high toilet coverage did not feature in the list of 75 districts thus shortlisted.

State ranking based on NSSO 2015 survey

1. Sikkim

2. Kerala

3. Mizoram

4. Himachal Pradesh

5. Nagaland

District ranking based on NSSO 2015 survey

· The survey covered 53 districts located in the plains and 22 in hill states and the North-East.

· Sindhudurg in Maharashtra emerged as the cleanest district in the country.

· Among the other cleanest districts in the plains were Nadia (West Bengal), Satatra (Maharashtra), Midnapore East (West Bengal) and Kolhapur (Maharashtra).

· Dungarpur, Pali and Ajmer in Rajasthan were found to be the laggards - all three ranked in the bottom five. As many as 13 out of the 53 districts chosen were from Gujarat. But three districts in PM’s home state — Ahmedabad, Anand and Panchmahal -lagged on all four parameters.

Conclusion

Since Open Defecation Free villages and cities cannot be achieved without all the households and individuals conforming to the desired behaviour of toilet use, every day and every time, community action and generation of peer pressure on the outliers are the key. Therefore behavior change communication should focus on triggering entire communities. Community based monitoring and vigilance committees are essential to create peer pressure. Delivery mechanisms would be adopted to meet the community needs, which is to be decided by the States.

Availability of water is an important factor for sustaining sanitation facilities created. Conjoint programmes may be proritised at the District and GP levels under the SBM (Gramin) and the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), to maximize the availability of water for sanitary purposes.

‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ is not just about cleaning surroundings but also seeking the participation of people in creating trash-free environment, providing sanitation facilities and paving a way for Swatchh Bharat eventually. This campaign will not only help citizens adopt good habits of cleanliness but also boost our image as a nation, sincerely working towards cleanliness.